The Lifestreaming Verses Blogging Debate Revisited: Audio Discussion
In the most recent episode of The New Mediology (listen online or in iTunes), Nathan and I discussed the recent debate in social media circles that blogging is dead and that lifestreaming is the new thing to do. What prompted much of this debate was that at the end of June, one of the blogging world’s top bloggers decided to abandon his blog in order to begin lifestreaming. The blogger, Steve Rubel, announced on his blog in a final post that he was leaving blogging to lifestream because “blogging feels old.”
I’ve been reading Steve for several years now and have generally thought he was pretty well on track with things in social media, but I think he made a mistake this time. The mistake I believe he made is that he gave up ground as an influential voice in the world of social media in order to do something that does not continue to validate the voice he’d worked hard to develop.
With blogging, you have the chance to build a tribe by telling people what you think. If anyone is interested, they’ll keep coming back to know more about what you think. With lifestreaming you don’t tell people what you think. You’re really just showing them the things you’re thinking about. That’s very different. Thought leaders offer perspective by telling you what they think. Everyone else just tells you the things that are on their mind, catch their eye, or just seem interesting. I believe Steve Rubel gave up a great seat at the thought leader table to go sit with everyone else.
If you’re trying to establish a credible, authoritative voice on any topic, blogging is perhaps one of the best opportunities ever available to you to do so. You can do lifestreaming secondarily, but don’t walk away from a chance to become a leader by telling people what you think.
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Unrelated Request: We need a new theme for the beginning and end of The New Mediology podcast. If you want to suggest a new show theme song at a site like Podsafe music, you own the rights for a song, or want to write an original song for the show, please let us know. We really, need a new one!
Tags: blogging, lifestreaming, podcast, Steve Rubel, The New Mediology
August 3rd, 2009 at 8:32 am
You make a good point Bill. As much as I respected Rubel’s blog and the opinions that filled it, I’m not on board with him on this one. Dont get me wrong, I’m a fan of the lifestreaming format and adopted it about 9 months ago, organically. In my case, I took a premeditated break from blogging because it was a reflection of my life. I wanted to be online again but for different reasons, and I stumbled onto Tumblr. I find out nearly a year later that I am “lifestreaming” now. It was an easy transition because I was also not trying to build a “tribe” around my blog. In Rubel’s case he has made great efforts, online and offline, to build his tribe. Then suddenly he’s lifestreaming? He appears to jump to lifestreaming because it’s what “the cool kids are doing” which I think happens more than we want to admit. I see way to many folks, notable and not, making dramatic shifts in how they communicate online based on what tools and/or formats are “hottest”. I think this is evident on Twitter right now, I honestly think there are millions of people tweeting everyday and have no idea why.
August 3rd, 2009 at 8:34 am
Great thoughts here Steve. I agree…there probably are millions of people tweeting and have no idea why.
August 3rd, 2009 at 9:48 am
I love that they are tweeting and don’t care if they know why. At least they are communicating. There is a place for both formats. I will say, however, that after being a huge proponent of following/reading blogs I just took major action. I went from 384 feeds down to just 35 last night. I had taken a one month hiatus from reading blogs to see what really mattered. Not much it seems.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:13 am
Bill - right on. I think it’s a degeneration to go from blogging to “lifestreaming.” In my old psychology schooling that was called “stream of consciousness” and we expected any garbage to just fall out of someone’s brain. Noone I know has a stream of consciousness brilliant enough that I want to know every detail. I want content that has been thought out, researched, and leads to a suggested plan of action. “Lifestreaming?” - I’ll just watch my 2-yr-old granddaughter and enjoy it for what it is.
August 3rd, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Jeremy - Wow! That’s a big reduction. I cut a lot of my feeds recently as well.
Dan, I agree. The thinking things out and telling me what came from that process is one of the things I appreciate most from blogs.
August 5th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
I’d love to hear you talk more about this. I’m currently blogging and tweeting, as well as writing newsletters and publishing books. But I’m struggling with the decision of what to say where. I’ve linked my blogs to twitter, so my tweets (like yours) are often blog teasers. Then usually if I want to share a quick link or empowering quote, I also tweet about that. Do you have a system that you follow in your head?
August 5th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Thanks Ann. Did you listen to the podcast already? I went a little bit more in depth on the topic there. You can hear it over at http://thenewmediology.com. As for a personal system, I try to make sure I’m balancing content and conversation with my Tweets and try to make sure I don’t use it too much for purely promotional reasons. I have purposefully not linked to new blog posts I wrote because I didn’t feel like I’d really done much other non-promo type of tweeting in the previous few days. When I’m really active in Twitter I don’t worry about it, but when I’m less active, I pay a lot closer attention to that. Good question.